Comments Posted By Andromahi

Reports about black duffel bags and pressure cookers-and us tough, tough, northeasterners. Turning off the tv and leaving the house, I hear the birds salute the rising sun. Even though it’s obscured by the gathering clouds, they still sing. Closing my eyes, I hear the cars go by and pretend they are waves, crashing on the shore, far, far away from where I am. My phone beeps and I hear about circuit boards and a see a little boy with a sign for peace. I can turn it off and walk away, but it will still be there when I return. “I am not far away, I am here,” I mumble to the wind.

In the winter, the swell of the ocean is more pronounced than in the summer. The waves seem to kiss the fog and for a moment the sky and the ocean are blended into one seamless horizon. It is in that exact moment, where the ocean and sky blur into one, that life seems infinite-just like that garden with the intersecting paths you’ve seen in your dreams. With each blending of the horizon you see a new possibility. The wind is howling and whipping around you, urging you to go home, but you are transfixed-staring at each new possibility as it swells, and then falls.

A visitor to this land might say, “Where are have all the people gone?” He doesn’t realize that in our tiny corner of the world, there are few of us left. The recent disasters of both the natural and unnatural kind have shaken us to our core. Here we no longer go out to say hello. There are no neighbors here because there is no neighborhood to belong to anymore. Visitors will do well to remember this. We do not want you here.

Cool summer days fade to winter here. Here we bypass fall and skip straight to death. And yet, you can steel feel the warm sun on your face through a car window, and it reminds you of your summer gone by.